Halloween Snapshots

Good morning! It's 10 a.m. on Halloween and I already have a tummy ache from eating too much candy corn. Is that going to stop me? Nope.

I have Blake at work with me today for our Halloween potluck and we are heading over to The Dog Whisperer's house later this evening to hand out candy and enjoy the beautiful fall weather we are having. I'm a happy girl.

Since I should really get to work since we'll be slacking off most of the afternoon...here are a few of my Halloween snapshots so far.

My bumblebee costume. I wore this downtown Saturday night. Today I'm just rocking the wings and antenna since it's a little chilly today and my boss probably wouldn't appreciate this outfit too much.

Blake is a Wide Retriever today. I can't get over how adorable this is
and he doesn't seem to mind the shirt too much! 

Pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting
 made from scratch by yours truly :) You can find the recipe here.

I absolutely cannot wait to spend the evening with some wonderful people in my life. I hope you all have a safe and happy Halloween!


When you put a birthday hat on your dog and he becomes visibly upset

I'm sure if Blake could speak, he'd say he had the most wonderful 1st birthday yesterday. Since I was at work all day, he spent the day at The Dog Whisperer's house. When I showed up last night so we could all celebrate his birthday together, Blake was adorable. He was so happy and exhausted from his day of fun....

Then we put a birthday hat on him and he went from excited to shamed in an instant....

"Really mom?"

 

I can't say Blake loved the birthday hat, but he definitely had a happy birthday. In all seriousness, though, I am so thankful for all the joy this little 1-year-old has brought into my life.

We may have overcelebrated Blake's birthday by going bowling after all of this and taking a few too many shots. Note to self: Taking an excessive amount of shots doesn't make you any better at bowling. It does, however, make the attempt much more entertaining.

Happy Friday!

It's Okay Thursday

I really love this linkup. It's at the point in the week where I am ready for the weekend, where I start to wonder if I really have gone crazy...and seeing everyone's "It's okay" posts makes me realize I am at least not alone in my quirkiness. So here goes!

It's okay to be overly emotional about the fact that my child is turning one-year-old today. I can't stop looking at pictures from when I first took Blake home and remembering how tiny he was. I might shed a few tears at some point...and that is okay.

On that note, it's okay to have a full-fledged birthday celebration planned for him. We'll be celebrating with The Dog Whisperer at his house with his roommate, his dog and my roommate. There are birthday hats to go around and I bought Blake a special birthday treat. Is this overboard? Yes. It is necessary? Absolutely. Is this one of the reasons I start to wonder if I've truly lost my mind? Yes. But, it's okay.

It's okay that I haven't stopped listening to the new Taylor Swift CD all week. Really, though...listening at work, in the car, at the gym....I can't turn it off and want to twirl everytime "Holy Ground" comes on.

It's okay that it's only 11:38 a.m. and I'm already mentally checked out at work. What? I'm going bowling tonight with The Dog Whisperer and can't wait to show off my skills....or I can't wait to drink and attempt to bowl. Either way, it's going to be fun!

It's okay to stop overthinking everything and just go with it.

It's okay to take a random Tuesday off work just to go to breakfast with a sweet boy and shop for your puppy's birthday celebration. Totally worth every vacation hour spent.

It's okay to have random moments where you feel so alive, and so happy, and so happy to be living your life that you laugh and cry at the same time and and you kind of never want the moment to end.

On that note, I hope you all have a more than okay Thursday. xoxo

What I'm Reading Right Now: The Happiness Project

I don't often post book reviews on here; actually, I never do. I love to read, I've just never really been good about summarizing a book and my thoughts on it on this here blog. I do, however, have to tell you about The Happiness Project.

When I told my brother I was currently reading The Happiness Project, he asked me "Why are you reading it when you are the one who wrote it?" He was clearly teasing me about my obsession with positivity and happiness.

Seriously though, the moment I saw this book under my recommendations on Amazon, I knew I would enjoy it. The book chronicles author Gretchen Rubin's year-long journey to greater happiness. It's not that the author was particularly unhappy, but she realized she should be happier. Each month, she sets specific goals focusing on each area of her life and spends that month taking specific steps to achieve the them.

While following along on her Happiness Project, I've really enjoyed the scientific research she cites throughout the book, along with the several quotes on happiness I've never heard before. I've found myself highlighting and bookmarking pages on my Kindle like it's nobody's business. Some of my favorite passages:

 

 

There are so many times I'm reading along and find myself nodding along as the author talks about the challenges she encountered, her thoughts on happiness and things she learned throughout her journey. It seems kind of silly, but I feel like I get criticized quite often for having a positive attitude. It's almost as if people are dismissive, or don't take me seriously sometimes. It was empowering to read about how the author also encountered these people who criticized or challenged her project. And the passage about how it's more selfless to act happy, but people tend to take that person for granted...that one really stood out to me. I've been able to relate to all of this and really love everything about this book.

 

If you love this kind of stuff as much as I do, I suggest you give it a read!





Miscellaneous

What's going on in my world right now:

I forgot to tell you all that Blake graduated from his beginner training class a few weeks ago. I really only share this with you because this photo is too cute not to. I am so glad I decided to sign him up for training when I did. He's almost a year old and while he is still very much a puppy, his behavior has improved so much and I'm so proud of him for catching on to the basic commands we learned so quickly. I'm pretty impressed that after 6 weeks of class I can get him to sit, stay, lay down, shake hands and drop toys or things he shouldn't have in his mouth.

I stumbled across these two quotes on Pinterest recently and I absolutely love them. I can't believe I still haven't read Eat, Pray, Love. I really need to add that to my Kindle.

In the last few weeks, I've started switching to morning workouts on the days I have evening plans. Depending on the week, I've been waking up at 5 a.m. 2-3 times a week to get to the gym. I know how awful this must sound, but I am finally at the point where it doesn't bother me too much. I used to hate it how I would get into a great gym routine, going 4-5 nights a week, but then a week would come where I had a lot going on in the evenings and I would hardly make it to the gym at all.

An active social life is no excuse to let all my hard work go to waste, so the only way to make this work was to workout in the morning on the days I have plans at night. I won't tell you hearing the alarm go off at 5 a.m. is a good feeling, but driving home from the gym at 7 a.m. feeling accomplished before I'd normally be awake is an amazing feeling.

I'm also super excited that yesterday I got up to a 4-mile run. This may sound silly to serious runners, but that is the farthest I've ever gone in one run. It took me 35 minutes and I seriously couldn't be more excited about this. When I started working out regularly and getting back in shape in August, I could hardly run a mile without struggling a lot. The fact that I've come this far in such a short time makes me realize that so much of our limitations are all mental. I'm not setting any specific goals, but this makes me so excited to build up my endurance even more.

 

Last but not least, if you don't watch Modern Family on ABC, you need to start. It's the perfect combination of funny and heartwarming. I'm obsessed with Phil's-osophy.

 

My favorite: "When life gives you lemonade, make lemons. Life will be all like "what?!?"

 

That's all for now. I hope everyone is having a great week!



Tell me...

Do you watch Modern Family? Who is your favorite character?

Do you prefer working out in the morning or evenings?

It's Okay Thursday: Wedding Edition

I participated in one link-up a few weeks ago and now I'm link-up crazy. Not really, but I figured this might be a good way to share some highlights from last weekend's wedding festivities without boring you all with unecessary details. Onward...

It's okay to use more than one penis straw during bachelorette party festivities. It's better to be the girl with the 4 penis straws in her drink than the girl who won't even use one. It's all okay.

 

It's okay to discover a stripper pole at the bar during said bachelorette party and twirl around on it. You're obviously not a stripper, so this is totally okay and all in good fun, proven even more true when you fall off that stripper pole. 

 

It's okay to get ready in the bridal suite with the bridal party if the bride says it's okay and your best friend is with you. It's okay if people are going to see the professional photos and be like "Who is 'that girl' getting ready with the bridesmaids?"

 

 

It's okay that the best man (your best girl friend and wedding date's brother) calls you both out for being in a lesbian relationship and asks you both to stand up during his best man speech. It's totally okay. Just go with it.

 

 

It's okay to shower your best friend with confetti when the clock strikes midnight on her birthday. Maybe you will track it all over the hotel you are staying in and find confetti in your hair 3 days later, but just look at the pure joy on her face. Totally okay...totally worth it. 

Well there you have it. It's Okay Thursday and a recap of the wedding without getting into boring details. I just love weddings...the dressing up, the family and friends that are like family, the dancing and the booze.

On Friendship

“A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.”
― Lois Wyse

Hi and happy Tuesday! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend! I sure did and I can't wait to fill you in. My life-long best friend's brother got hitched this weekend and I have lots of great photos and stories from the bachelorette party and the wedding. I plan to share all of that with you tomorrow, but in the meantime, I want to talk about friendship.

See, because of the wedding, I was able to spend every waking (and sleeping) moment of my 4-day weekend with my best friend in the whole world, Taryn. We've been friends since we were 5-years-old and while we have had our ups and downs, our friendship has always been a constant in my life. She lives in Atlanta and works in film production, so we go months without seeing each other and when we do see each other, it's usually a quick dinner or coffee date on her way out of town. With loads of family staying at her parents' house, we planned to have her stay with me for the whole weekend and we had lots of fun wedding activities to keep us busy and drunk.

When we are together, we kind of enter our own little world. If I'm causing a scene, she is right next to me doing it, too. If I discover there is a stripper pole at the bar, you bet she is right there with me to give it a try (more on this later...). We can often be seen in public causing a scene because we can't stop laughing about something that nobody else thinks is funny. With me always running late and her always running later, we are usually frantically rushing to wherever we are off to when we are together. For example, on Saturday we had a packed schedule to prepare for the wedding that afternoon. We had errands to run for the bride and hair appointments to get to. Upon waking up and commenting on how we needed to get ready and get on our way, we instead chose to go to brunch and proceeded to get lost in mimosas and conversation until we only had an hour to get to our hair appointments. This is us. We are quirky and wild when we are apart, but when we are together we are a force to be reckoned with.

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If you're like me, you're probably lucky enough to have some great friends. If you're even luckier, you have a few select friends who just get you. And even when they don't get you, they support you. You can be honest with them and trust they won't judge. They are there when other people run away. You can laugh with them (and at them) and when things aren't okay, they are there to listen, cry and sit with you in silence if that's what you need.

They are the friends you can go weeks, even months, without seeing or speaking to, and the moment you are reunited, you pick up right where you left off. These friendships are so rare and so wonderful. They are a constant in a world full of surprises and unexpected changes.

Taryn is one of those friends to me, though I am lucky enough to have a few. It's interesting to see how friendship changes in adulthood. You become totally okay with having a few very close friends and lots of aquaintances. You become a little less tolerant of people you can't rely on and you are okay with letting those friendships fade. You understand that you can't please everyone and not everyone is going to like you and that is okay.

Adulthood has it's challenges...challenges we never could have understood as teenagers. Let's be sure to always be grateful for the friendships we rely on to be with us through the good, blissfully happy, bad, devastating, wild, drunken, silly and crazy times of our lives.

2 Years of Blogging Bliss

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Two years ago I started a blog. Two years ago I was excited, inspired and to be honest, slightly concerned about what I was even going to write about to keep up with a blog. Today I'm laughing at myself because I clearly have plenty to say.

I may not always have something brilliant to say. I may never have a huge following. Sometimes I over share and sometimes I don't know exactly what to say so I just write until it makes sense to me. Sometimes I inspire and other times I make you shake your head in disapproval. Sometimes life happens and it's hard for me to be "Little Miss Sunshine." Other times I might shine too brightly with my positivity. But I can promise you that I'm always true to myself. Having this outlet where I can be me and say what I say has been such a good thing for me.

In honor of reflecting and celebrating 2 years, today I just want to share a few of my favorite posts. Is it vain to say I have favorite posts of my own? I sure hope not because here I go...

Date a Girl
Think of this as a really long personal ad....actually, don't. This post was inspired by a wonderful blog post my mother sent to me called Date a Girl Who Reads. To be honest, I really liked the style and thought it might be fun to write one about myself.

"But My 'Why Not Me?' Philosophy Began..."
This is when I realized that I am a "Yes Girl." Instead of saying "I don't sing karaoke," "I won't try online dating," "I can't do that," I started saying "Why not me?"

25 Things at 25
Birthday posts are always fun and I started the tradition of doing a list for each birthday. This post was basically 25 things I'd learned in my 25 years. I loved writing this one.

The Dos & Don'ts of Online Dating
I'm always entertained by any post in which I attempt to offer advice. This was especially exciting because eHarmony tweeted the link to their Twitter followers and posted it on their Facebook page. I was so excited about this!

Valentine's Day Recap 2 Weeks Later
I've written about my fair share of dating stories on this here blog, but this one takes the cake as the most entertaining in my book. This was a downright nightmare of a date, but I can at least find humor in an awkward situation like this one.

26th Birthday Bucket List 
I warned you; I really love these posts. This was so much to write and to attempt to cross everything off the list!

28 Days of Thanks: Mission Accomplished!
I went on a mission to take time out of each day and send/give a thank you note to one person in my life each day for 28 days. This is the recap and just looking back makes me want to send a few thank you notes this week!

Whether you are new here or you've been following along from Day 1, thank you for reading along. Knowing that people out there appreciate anything I'm writing means a lot to me.